by Reese Hogan
It hit her suddenly: it had been Cu Zanthus’s voice redirecting her savior – captor? Whatever he was. He was Belzene, but he wasn’t with the Belzenes. A collaborator. Of course. When Cu Zanthus had set up that ambush, there was no way he would have found enough Dhavnak spies on such short notice. He’d been making connections the whole time he’d been here – Belzenes who wanted favor after the takeover, who wanted high-paying government positions further along. Even then, it was unlikely he’d gotten more than ten or so. The person she’d shot, then, had almost certainly been Belzene, not Dhavnak. One thing to be thankful for. And I didn’t kill him.
“This is your fault.”
“Wait.” Someone grabbed her by the hair and pulled her face up. She found herself looking at Cu Zanthus. He looked more enraged than she’d ever seen him. “What did you say, Keiller Yano?”
It had been her who spoke. She only realized it now. But those horrible moments following Cu Zanthus’s comprehension that she had, in fact, been hiding something, flooded back without warning… and it no longer felt like a sensation-rich nightmare. It was real life. She was in more trouble than she’d ever been. Cu Zanthus would be carting her – someone he surely saw as a traitor after the withheld intelligence and the insubordination – to Larin Vron Lyanirus. Blackwood and Andrew had really shrouded, alone in that truck, with Blackwood barely functioning and, worse, with that dekatite burned into her arm. They were as good as dead. And in one of the most horrible ways imaginable.
“This is your fault,” she repeated, twice as loud. Unexpectedly, it was fury that coursed through her, warming her veins. “I knew what I was doing. You should have handed over Andrew and trusted me! You’ve ruined everything!”
“Trusted you? After I find out you’ve been hiding intel? After I hear this lightning storm that attacked us was caused by you?”
He released her, shoving her head roughly to the side. They resumed their quick pace. The sounds of warfare were sharp and sudden again, loud enough to mask their words from anyone more than a step away. She eyed Cu Zanthus’s Belzene uniform; she would look like a wounded soldier being rushed away for attention. No one would stop them.
“No! Wasn’t me!” She could barely breathe, slung over this man’s shoulder as he ran, but she had to make Cu Zanthus believe her. Before this went any further. “Was Blackwood. But I don’t know enough yet! You can’t just haul me out… middle of a mission… shoot me like an enemy–”
“Better than leaving you in as a double agent!” he shot back.
“No! I’m not–”
“You shot one of my men!”
“I- I didn’t have time to explain! Blackwood was gonna get away. Couldn’t lose her. And I knew if I brought her Andrew… would keep my cover strong. You want me to break cover, Cu Zanthus, you need to tell me!”
“If I ever want you to break cover, believe me, you’ll know,” he answered coldly.
And that’s when Klara Yana knew. It was no accident that Andrew had gotten in that truck and not her. Andrew had told him about her. They had set it up together. Maybe Cu Zanthus hadn’t planned it that way initially, but after hearing Blackwood’s words – You must have admitted to yourself you might be able to cause lightning, too – he’d pulled the trigger on the operation. She’d been replaced, by Blackwood’s brother of a measly seventeen cycles. She fought back the sudden urge to retch. Her one small consolation was that Andrew apparently hadn’t mentioned her gender; if Cu Zanthus knew, this would have been a very different conversation.
Whether she could keep it that way was another question entirely.
When the person carrying her finally shoved through the door beneath the theater, she’d come up with a plan. The head wound. She hadn’t been thinking straight. She’d been confused, had thought Cu Zanthus’s order of “Seize him!” had been for her, telling her to grab Andrew. A misunderstanding. And when Cu Zanthus told Lyanirus about the mark, the power? I’ll just show him. It’s on my hand, after all. And I don’t have any power; what can he possibly do?
“Kommandir Ayaterossi!”
Lyanirus’s unexpected shout pulled her from a haze she didn’t remember falling in. Fatigue pulled at her with every wave of torment across her side, and her body had gone completely slack on her captor’s shoulder.
“When, exactly, were you planning to tell me about this operation of yours?” Lyanirus barked.
“I wanted to get the intel first, sir,” said Cu Zanthus, somewhere off to her left. “It was a very delicate–”
“Now you’ve sent the chief whatever-she-is off into the dekatite without backup! What in Shon Aha’s name happened in there? It was her? She used the lightning power?”
“Yes, sir, she did. She meant to collapse the mines. And she might as well have succeeded, for the damage she did. She mentioned having a mark. Some sort of mark that causes lightning.”
“How long have you known that?” said Lyanirus incredulously. “Since before or after you made the decision to leave me out of it?”
“It was after, sir. I thought we’d just be watching her, maybe snatching her, if things went really backwards, but–”
“What about Hollanelea?”
Several agonizing moments passed before Cu Zanthus answered. “It became apparent that Hollanelea withheld some key pieces of information. Including the fact, sir, that he has the same mark Blackwood does. The one that creates the lightning.”
“Is that him?” said Lyanirus after a second. His voice was very soft, very dangerous.
“Sir.”
“He’s wounded?”
“I shot him, sir.”
“I see.” Another pause. “Put him down.”
Klara Yana felt herself lowered until her feet touched the floor. She had her words ready. Yes, I got a mark, but neither of us realized it meant anything at all. It didn’t seem worth mentioning. We didn’t even know–
“Turn around, Hollanelea.”
Somehow, her legs supported her as she turned, though the room seemed to be swimming again. Those distant reports aboveground battered her skull. She blinked at the blurry form of Lyanirus. “Yes,” she began. “I got–” Without warning, her legs buckled. The man behind her caught her with a surprised grunt, a second before she hit the floor.
“You had to shoot him, didn’t you?” Lyanirus snarled. “Fine. Bring him to Dela Savene, back in that office off the southeast corner. She’ll get him patched up while we get to the bottom of this. Telchimaris! Contact every soldier you can about watching the dekatite faces we know about. The chief female has to come out somewhere. Ayaterossi–”
“We grabbed a piece of arphanium, sir. It might be enough…”
Klara Yana lost the rest of the conversation as she was hauled to the back of the theater and then through a narrow hallway. The light dimmed the farther back they went. She was brought through a doorway and into an office room, then dumped on the floor. Agony shot through her side, and she couldn’t hold back a hiss of pain. She saw a pair of candles flickering on a desk shoved against the far wall. By the other wall was a pile of blankets. The woman from the first meeting sat up from them when Klara Yana hit the ground. Klara Yana thought she saw her hide a book beneath the blanket.
“Bandage him!” ordered the man who’d dropped her.
Dela Savene nodded, getting hurriedly to her feet and rummaging in a desk drawer. Then she knelt at Klara Yana’s right side. Unlike the men, her white-blonde hair hadn’t been dyed; it hung loose over her shoulder, brushing the floor between them. Dhavnak women didn’t braid their hair, or put it up, or cut it any shorter than their waists. Klara Yana unthinkingly curled her fingers around the fine strands, which had fallen into her open palm on the floor. She could barely remember what it felt like to have hair this long.
She’d been sixteen when she hacked it off. A combination of several factors had gone into that daring decision. Her step-apa’s increasingly violent abuse in the three cycles since her ama had disappeared. The dawning realizati
on that her ama wouldn’t be coming home, and the knowledge that once Klara Yana had been assigned a husband, at seventeen, the rest of her life would be mapped out, and her ama would be gone forever. She’d thought about trying to convince that future husband to use his influences to find her ama. But there were no assurances her husband would be someone who had those connections. There were no assurances he wouldn’t be someone like her step-apa. It had been when she was trying to build that hypothetical husband in her head – the one who had the position and the willingness she’d need to pull off such a thing – that it had occurred to her she could simply become that person, and cut out the middle man. What better way to assure everything was done right?
Nausea twisted in her gut at how wrong she’d been. And at how much worse things might still get.
Dela Savene had produced a pair of scissors and was cutting from the bottom hem of her jacket up toward the wound in her side. Klara Yana lay on her back, chest heaving as she stared up at the guard who’d remained by the door. He watched with a scowl, arms crossed over his chest. Klara Yana felt the scissor blades reach the level of her breast wrap. She put one hand out, and Dela Savene stopped. She looked up, catching Klara Yana’s eye.
“That’s high enough,” Klara Yana said, her voice rough.
Dela Savene nodded, lowering her eyes again. She cut across the jacket and pulled the bottom half away, then set to work on the shirt underneath.
“How long will this take?” the guard growled. “The leuftkernel is waiting.”
“Does he want this soldier to get proper treatment?” Dela Savene murmured. She cut through the shirt quicker than she had the jacket, then tore a flap away. Klara Yana could tell it was just low enough that her breast wrap wouldn’t show. Would her smooth hairless skin be a giveaway? Her heart rate picked up as Dela Savene pulled out a small light and inspected the wound.
“The bullet didn’t go in. Just grazed you.” She looked up at the guard. “I need water.”
He looked back at her with distaste. “Then go get some.”
“And you’ll rub on the salve?” said Dela Savene, gesturing to a jar beside her.
The man glared at Klara Yana with disgust. “I’ll get the damn water,” he finally spat, and walked out. The door swung shut behind him.
Dela Savene got swiftly to her feet and threw a lock on the back of the door. Seconds later, she was back at Klara Yana’s side with a bottle of water. Before Klara Yana could ask, she’d wet down a rag and was scrubbing the blood from her skin. Klara Yana almost screamed at the sudden pain.
“Tell me what’s going on,” said Dela Savene breathlessly. “And make it quick.”
Klara Yana looked from Dela Savene to the locked door and back again. “Maybe you should tell me,” she managed.
“I need to cut the rest of your shirt off to do this properly. Did you really want him here for that?”
Klara Yana’s whole body went cold. First Andrew saw through her disguise. Now the leuftkernel’s wife. This can’t be happening.
“Slide back against the desk.” Dela Savene took Klara Yana under the arms and helped her over. There, she sliced the rest of her shirt and jacket off, in three quick slashes.
“But how did you know?” Klara Yana finally got out, as Dela Savene slathered salve over the wound.
The other woman shrugged, almost apologetically. “I’ve seen soldiers disciplined often. And every single one is mortified to be punished in front of a woman. But you didn’t so much as glance at me. That’s when I started paying attention.”
Vo Hina’s mercy. What if either Cu Zanthus or Lyanirus started ‘paying attention’? I’m in too deep. This is spinning out of my control…
“So what’s going on?” Dela Savene said again. “Did Larin Vron find out?”
“No,” said Klara Yana. “This is about… something else. It’s not good, no, but it’s not about that.”
“Thank the gods for that much, anyway,” said Dela Savene. She wound a bandage around Klara Yana’s torso, darting discreet glances at her face as she worked. She wanted to share more, Klara Yana could tell. What was it? Something about the leuftkernel? Anything could help. Klara Yana was about to start pressing her for intel when Dela Savene spoke on her own.
“I hardly ever see this anymore. The disguise thing, I mean. Way too many risks. Plus there are better ways.”
Klara Yana blinked, momentarily derailed. “Better ways? What do you mean?”
“The truth is, we can’t improve the lives of women by being men. It’s like accepting we’ll never be equal to them, so why even try? And that’s no fight at all.”
Klara Yana’s breath caught when she realized what Dela Savene was saying. “Is that what you think I’m doing? Trying to fight the system?”
Dela Savene’s eyes widened. “W- Why else would you do it?”
“Because I need connections that a woman can’t get! Yet. And I couldn’t afford to wait any longer.”
“Yet?” Dela Savene’s brow furrowed. “You really think a few cycles is all that separates us from… no. You can’t be that naïve.”
“Naïve?” Klara Yana’s anger flared. “It’s not naïve to know our government gave Ambassador Talgeron a highly prestigious position ten cycles ago! Why is it such a stretch to think we’ll be allowed into military positions soon, too?”
Dela Savene sat back, looking at her closely. “You mentioned her at the meeting, too. You’ve been studying her, it seems.”
“Some,” said Klara Yana cautiously.
“Well, I don’t want to… to shatter any illusions you may have. But I think it’s important that you’re not going into anything blind here, with the expectation that Larin Vron will go easy on you because you think ‘women have it better now’ or something. OK?”
A chill passed through Klara Yana as she remembered Lyanirus almost choking her unconscious. Was that what Dela Savene called “Larin Vron going easy” on someone?
“Trust me,” she said uneasily, “I don’t think that.”
Dela Savene glanced toward the locked door again, biting her lip. “Good. That’s good. Now just stay quiet and listen a moment.” She bent her head back to her bandaging, talking as she worked. “Talgeron wasn’t an ambassador – not really. That treaty with Jasterus you mentioned? Dhavnakir had been trying to get it for months, but Jasterus wasn’t ready to sign on with people who treated their women so badly. So our government found Talgeron and stuck her in that so-called position, as a way to show Jasterus that women were being more respected. She was a figurehead. That’s it.”
Klara Yana jerked back. “What are you talking about?”
“You think I don’t pick this stuff up? I’ve sat invisible in enough meetings and social calls with Larin Vron. Talgeron wasn’t the only one. Just one of the most famous.”
“That’s not true!” Klara Yana said heatedly. “She would never have agreed to that!”
“Agreed?” said Dela Savene, a note of resentment in her voice. “They had her foreigner husband in a labor camp, and tortured him when she resisted.”
The words were a stab to Klara Yana’s heart. Foreigner husband. That would have been Klara Yana’s Criesucan father, the one who’d disappeared when she was a baby. It was this small fact that shook Klara Yana’s hope that Dela Savene was wrong. The woman could say anything she liked about Talgeron, but to know she’d been married to a foreigner?
“But I heard she spoke out on women’s rights!” Klara Yana protested.
“That came later. After her husband was killed, she rebelled. Rallied several Dhavnak-occupied countries before she was arrested. I met her, you know. As a teenager. I’ve never met anyone so passionate.” There was no mistaking the anger that flashed across Dela Savene’s face. She got to her feet and circled around the desk, pulling another drawer open.
Passionate. Klara Yana’s stomach turned. She’d never known that side of her ama. Because she’d only seen her at home when her step-apa was there, drunk and bullying th
e both of them. It was only that last time, when her ama had told her about being chosen for Dhavnakir’s program to employ females in better jobs, that Klara Yana had seen happiness light up in her eyes. She could still hear her voice. This is a sure sign things are changing. Why hadn’t her ama told her the truth? Klara Yana had been thirteen; she could have handled it. Or had Ama not known until a lot later, when it was too late to get back and tell her daughter? To warn her?
Klara Yana pushed herself to her feet. “Where did they put her? Which labor camp?”
Dela Savene’s eyebrows rose at the question. “No idea. I know the gist of what happened, but even Larin Vron doesn’t discuss her life after she was arrested. The problem was fixed, after all.”
But he still harbored plenty of hate for her. Klara Yana had picked up on that during the meeting. What in the gods’-damned-name of Vo Hina have they done with my ama?
Dela Savene retrieved a few shirts from the drawer and placed them on the metal top. “Haven’t you seen how well other cultures treat their women in comparison? Seen how much better things could be?”
“Well… yes. I mean, I guess so. But Dhavnakir is different. We have a community those other countries don’t. And our women are the foundation of that. To say there’s nothing good about being a Dhavnak woman–”
“That’s not what I said!” Dela Savene said sharply. “I love the community we have, and I love the fact that the women provide a caring and generous base for our children. But what I don’t love is that there are still way too many men – too many people – who think nothing of taking us for granted. Who treat us as if we barely exist, or can be… be forced into submission. Can be treated like…” Abruptly, she turned away, putting her hands to her face. Putting them over the bruises there.
Klara Yana stared at her. A vile mixture of shock and shame churned through her stomach as she remembered similar bruises from her step-apa. She put a hand to her own face, closing her eyes for a second. “But it’s not all of them–” she began.